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A Season of Violence & NonviolenceIt's been quite a season for violence.
What caught the attention of the media was the tragedy at Virginia Tech, which left 33 dead, including the shooter. Also in the news was the increased violence in Iraq that has accompanied the “surge” of troops to bring violence under control.
It's understandable that we pay more attention to violence at home or when it involves our citizens. It's closer to home and involves people who appear to be innocent and victims of circumstances.
I couldn't help thinking about how we lowered the flag and shared our mutual horror of this event and morn for those who died and for their families.
But I also couldn't help but think how that 33 dead might be a relatively slow day in Iraq. At the same time as the “hostage situation” at NASA in Houston I was at a gathering with a different focus—the Living Legends Nonviolence Conference in San Jose.
While at the conference we heard about Sen. John McCain's comments, which was the buzz for a while. I went online and heard him say the Beach Boys had a song called Bomb Iran. He was referring to “Barbara Ann” and the chorus “Ba-ba-ba-ba-Barbara Ann.” He said it was a joke, but I couldn't help but wonder what he really thinks.
In all, though, that and other current events just seemed to reflect how we support certain violence and mourn other instances of it. We don't really think as much about the consequences and suffering of the human beings who die further away from home. It must be clear by now that the majority of those dying are “innocent,” no matter their country.
Being in the conference all day and evening on Friday, returning to San Diego on Saturday, going to EarthFair on Sunday and then going to print on Tuesday has left me little time to integrate all that I heard. While I can't really give the conference it's just due, I can say it was moving and inspirational. I can share a few of the highlights.
The conference director was Barbara Fields, Executive Director of the Association of Global New Thought (AGNT). It began with a kickoff event at Agape Church and Michael Beckwith, D.D., in Culver City followed by the Gandhi King Peace Train ride from Los Angeles to San Jose on Thursday, April 17.
Southern Californians were well represented by Rev. Dr. Kathy Hearn, Rev. Wendy Craig-Purcell and Rev. Christian Sorenson, D.D. Among the entertainers were Jeanne and Karl Anthony, James Twyman and Rickie Byars Beckwith.
The all-day conference on Friday in San Jose celebrated the legends of nonviolence and the philosophy of attaining peace through nonviolent action as demonstrated by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, co-founded A Season of Nonviolence with AGNT and spoke of living as communities, not individuals. We are inter-dependent and inter-related. Thinking in terms of nationalism is wrong in view of this, if we think we can preserve our self in our part of the world as separate. We are connected.
Dean Lawrence Carter, professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, challenged the focus we have on material things. The way to peace is moving from a thing-oriented society to a people-oriented society. With people there is a sacred dignity. With people we have personal values. With government, we have property values. Only a government could consider the loss of innocent lives as collateral damage, he said. People would not.
A Benedictine Monk from Mount Saviour monastery in Elmira, New York, Brother David Steindl-Rast, questioned the idea that we can achieve peace my making war. What Gandhi, King and Ceasar Chavez had in common was courage, he said. He asked people to speak the way of encouragement. Speak courage. The way toward peace is to take away fear, which is what leads to violence and oppression. Know we are rooted in Divine Love and not the ego-cage he called individualism. He asked people not to perpetuate fear, not to spread fear—the roots of violence—but to spread “fear-not.”
Dolores Huerta was cofounder of the United Farm Workers and contemporary of Cesar Chavez. When she received an honorary degree from Princeton University in 2006 she was acknowledged for “her insatiable hunger for justice—La Causa—and her tireless advocacy, she has devoted her life to creative, compassionate, and committed citizenship.”
She works tirelessly for justice because she believes there can be no peace without justice. It was interesting to hear how Chavez read all he could on Gandhi and based his movement on nonviolence, even encouraging his supporters to meditate so they could respond without violence when confronted by violent people. Huerta said Gandhi's nonviolence was not passive—it was pro-active.
Are immigrants important? She asked the audience if they would rather be on a deserted island with a lawyer or a farm worker—who might be able help feed them.
One challenge with immigration today, she said, is that NAFTA and corn subsidies have taken jobs from Mexican workers and forced them to come to the U.S. (There's more on “cornification” in the Food Fight article).
Huerta told the audience not to forget that “we are all Africans.” We all came from there. We are one human race.
Also honored at the conference was Yolanda King, daughter of Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr. In her view we have a choice—not between violence and nonviolence—but between nonviolence and nonexistence. She spoke of love—not romantic love or the love we have for friends—but the love of God, of humanity that unites and binds us together, whether we like the others or not. Others might even be distasteful to us, but we are in this together—we're one. The “fight” in the nonviolence movement is the fight for justice.
One thing the conference demonstrated was that we do have role models for operating differently, peacefully.
One of the most moving aspects of the conference for me was listening to the youth, especially the grandson of Cesar Chavez, Anthony. I heard his grandfather speak at a Fall Health Classic in Palm Springs years ago.
It wasn't so much the things he said that impressed and distracted me. He told of his remembrance of his grandfather. He told of his dreams of a better and peaceful world. He is about to graduate from college.
It was not serendipitous, I suppose, that when I was a little younger than he, I lived a few blocks away and attended San Jose State University (SJSU). The conference was next to the Convention Center, which was a short two blocks away—meaning in between there was another hotel, Original Joe's, a Jack-in-the-Box, McDonald's, Sub-Way, a Mexican café, Ben & Jerry's, and about 6 pizza parlors away from campus. Well, almost six. I lived on the other side of the campus, in an apartment, next door to a pizza place, of course.
As Anthony talked of his dreams of the world I thought how war interrupts lives and dreams. I went to SJSU with my buddy Jerry. We went to Orange Coast College (OCC) together. I choose SJSU because it then had the best journalism department in the State University system. Journalism was an elective I just happened to take that I discovered excited me. I thought I could make a difference that way and wanted to pursue it.
Unfortunately I had joined the Naval Reserve while at OCC. The pressure to go on active duty and other circumstances eventually pulled me away from school. My friend Jerry went into the Army. We had another friend Ron, who went into the Army right after high school. He was a year ahead of us and always fixed our cars or told us how to fix them ourselves.
When I joined the Reserve I had never even heard of Vietnam, and later after the conflict grew, I figured I would be safe in the Navy. While I eventually found myself part of the River Patrol Force in the Mekong Delta, I still had it better than many people there.
Jerry and I talked to Ron when he came back and before we both went.
He wouldn't say much. He'd stare at us and just not respond. Even after Jerry and I returned he wouldn't talk. Then it made more sense why. About all he told us was they went through over 100 replacements—100 men—to keep his 10 or 12-man squad full in the year he was there. After he returned I don't remember seeing him without a ½ pint of vodka in his back pocket or close by. We'd get together for a drink and never talk about it. Then out of the blue he'd mention a small piece like how his feet were never really dry the whole year he was there. Ten years later he looked 20-years older.
In a similar way Jerry never quite came back. While Ron was slowed down, Jerry seemed driven in the other direction—super active—until he had a traffic accident while drinking. He partially lost his memory and never recovered it. He'd remember some of our experiences together and not others. Then the next time I'd see him he remembered other times and forgot what he had remembered the last time we spoke.
For years I never talked about being there. When Larry Dossey came to town we talked about that. For years after he came back he didn't tell people he had been there either. When I first came back I did for a short time, then went the opposite direction. I was married several years before my wife, Marlene (now a good friend) even knew I had been over there. It took me about a dozen years before I talked about it.
I wasn't going to get into it here, but finding myself back in San Jose thinking about nonviolence and dreams, I couldn't really talk about the conference and ignore what it became for me.
I think a major part of that was remembering that while there were casualties in the military, it was often the civilians you saw suffer. The most? I don't know. The way the war was run, even that war, was too political. It was disillusioning to watch for both those we wanted to be there and those we did not. We saw a lot and little made “sense.”
I was the lucky one. What got me back on track was the path I'm still on. Becoming more aware of myself and how human beings operate. Being able to act in a more conscious and powerful way rather than a reactive way. Acting from choice and get-to's and not from have-to's, meant resolving the past so I was not acting from there and could be more present. For years I had many, strange and unusual jobs and moved around quite a bit before getting into Transcendental Meditation and then est and on and on. I eventually stopped blaming others for the circumstances of my life.
Wars can get in the way of dreams. It took more than a dozen years to return to my college dreams. One day when Terry Cole-Whittaker decided to start a monthly newspaper I happened to be there working for her in another capacity.
I didn't do the first issue. I didn't want to be a part of it—but there I was with a teacher, Terry, who always encouraged people to discover and live their dreams. I was pulled back into working on her publication and soon rediscovered my passion for it. I guess if it's something that's yours to do, it's hard to escape it. Opportunity knocks and knocks again until we notice with some things. When Terry decided to go in another direction I started The Light Connection .
Listening to a young college student and his dreams, I hoped that the world—that we—wouldn't get in the way. I don't think so. The young people at the conference already had a focus and clarity about the world and what they could do that I did not. Maybe it takes a child—the young—to raise a village.
Have a great month,
Steve
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